rucio-clients cannot install on windows machines

[lgray]

Description

When installing rucio-clients it appears to fail in manipulating files on windows machines during setup. If it is not the intended scope to support windows installs of the client then we can not test rucio-related stuff on that OS. It's just kind of odd that it fails with file manipulation.

Here's a log of the installation process from our CI: https://github.com/CoffeaTeam/coffea/actions/runs/6102414820/job/17004397299?pr=882#step:8:178

Steps to reproduce

Attempt to pip install rucio-clients on windows.

Rucio Version

client 32.3.0

Additional Information

No response

[bari12]

Dear @lgray In principle we do not officially support Windows. Practically we could probably (would need to check this in detail) make the clients themselves windows compatible. Thus you could do simple rucio commands (list-dids, list-replicas, etc.) For downloading/uploading though the clients are strongly tied to the gfal toolkit/middleware, which is not windows compatible, nor is there any plan to make it compatible (afaik).

What rucio related stuff are you testing? Because if it includes downloading/uploading files this will (most likely) not work on windows.

Best, Martin

[lgray]

@bari12 we're actually so far just interested in querying and finding replicas - our use case is largely analysis dataset discovery and sorting through replicas / sites / files. Uploading/downloading, especially on windows, is not (so far) within scope.

[bari12]

👍 Ok, let me check with people. We need to check the feasibility of windows compatibility (besides the gfal issue) first. If it is really just the few lines concerning the setuputil (as pointed out by your logs) then this should be do-able, but these errors might also just be the first, of many, so I don't want to promise anything yet :-)